Antrix scam: former ISRO chief, 3 others barred from govenment jobs
25 Jan 2012
Former ISRO chief G Madhavan Nair, architect of India's first moon mission Chandrayan 1, and three former top scientists have been barred from holding any government job in the future.
Three other former high-ranking ISRO scientists have been similarly debarred from holding post in government-run organisations, the agency said in a statement today.
All four were already shunted out of ISRO in the wake of the Antrix-Devas deal relating to the cheap sale of S-band spectrum. The affair caused some stir last year, but escaped widespread public attention as it occurred when the '2G scam' was grabbing the headlines.
Reacting angrily to the decision, Nair squarely blamed K Radhakrishnan, his successor as ISRO chairman, accusing him of pursuing a "personal agenda" of which he was a victim.
He said Radhakrishnan is misleading the government. ''That individual is bent upon hitting so many people and in that process, he is killing the organisation," Nair told sections of the media in Bangalore.
The others against whom the action has been taken are former ISRO scientific secretary K Bhaskaranarayana, K R Sridharamurthi, former managing director of Antrix (a commercial arm of ISRO), and K N Shankara, former director of the ISRO satellite centre.
The bans came after two government committees found irregularities in the deal, which was signed when Nair was ISRO chairman.
